"Despite the mythology of the keen-eyed sharpshooter, most units were used as scouts and skirmishers. Because they were in the forefront of battles, casualty rates were higher than normal line units. “The proportion of killed and wounded in the sharpshooters was exceedingly large, probably without a parallel. The battalion went into the fight with 104 men and officers, and of these ninety-four men and officers were killed or wounded.” So wrote Confederate Major George Bernard, then commanding a sharpshooter unit during the siege of Petersburg in 1864-65."
A definition of terms might prove helpful.
Scouts find the enemy. What is his strength? Where are the enemy's flanks? Unit patches may reveal the identity of the enemy force. Perhaps the scouts can snatch some stragglers or deserters for questioning.
Pickets prevent the enemy scouts from doing the above. A screen of pickets at night keeps enemy raiders from pillaging your supplies while your main force sleeps.
Skirmishers screen your units' movement. A Division in line charging into battle is quite formidible. A Division in column spread out along a mile of road is the opposite. So a light force of skirmishers moves ahead and to the flanks of the main unit to keep the path clear of the dangers of ambush or snipers.
On the grande scale, cavalry performs this role for an army. However, for the local commander, a group of sharpshooters would be the scouts, pickets or skirmishers. In the game, this is reflected by a +1 initiative bonus to elements in a Brigade or Division that contains at least one Sharpshooter element.
Now to the question of light infantry. A regular infantry unit during the CW may have a number of mule drawn carts with supplies and ammo. The regulars can only go where their supply carts can go with them. Light infantry probably carried everything they needed on their backs. Now say that an enemy formed a defensive line by anchoring one flank on a seemingly impassable swamp or dense forrest. They could be reasonably sure that a force of regular infantry could not pass through this type of terrain. However, a force of light infantry might slip around their flank and unhinge their entire position.
Good luck with your mod ideas!
@grimjaw: I hadn't thought about it that way, you are right that they seem very strong. Based on what I understand, combat comes out very favorable for them. Here is my thinking.
I think that units are more likely to be selected in combat if they have more hits - so sharpshooters initiative advantage is given to everyone but they aren't selected to fight so much.
In a fight, if selected, you get a number of shots per round (usually 1) and if you hit, you subtract 1 hit and some cohesion from your adversary. Your adversary also gets to try to hit you back. If you score a hit, you also subtract some of your own cohesion. When you run out of cohesion, you retreat (as a element, not necessarily the whole stack). Once in a while the stack thinks about retreating and will try to do so if outnumbered, out of cohesion, or if lots of its elements are retreating (the chance of success is based on things like evasion). Whether you land a hit is based on whether a random number is greater than your score, where your score is calculated based on your firepower, assault, damage, and other statistics, those of your commander(s) (you have up to two commanders, one based on your brigade/division and the other based on the stack leader if the stack leader is different - I think the army commander affects the statistics of your stack leader, but not your chances directly).
Element firepower, assault, and damage values are given in pairs, I think the first is ranged the second is assault. A battle starts at long range (8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) and goes to range 1 and range 0 (assault). If a more rounds occur (if neither army is destroyed or retreats), only range 1 and range 0 (assault) occur in subsequent rounds. There is also ranged and assault damage, ranged is given in pairs again. I'm not 100% sure how it all works, but basically at a range, sharpshooters are a bit lower than infantry thus, as you say, about half as robust as infantry. In assault, sharpshooters are much less than infantry, so robustness is much closer to a quarter (who knows how the numbers are aggregated, maybe it is worse than a quarter). Add in that sharpshooters have a longer range and a faster rate of fire, you are right, they are quite strong.
A counter point is that since they weren't often on the front line during the assault phase of real battles, we might guess that they killed a lot more soldiers than sharpshooters were killed in the real war. On the other hand, sharpshooters might have been used more often as skirmishers, and thus might have been captured at a fairly high rate, I'm not sure.
I think that units are more likely to be selected in combat if they have more hits - so sharpshooters initiative advantage is given to everyone but they aren't selected to fight so much.
In a fight, if selected, you get a number of shots per round (usually 1) and if you hit, you subtract 1 hit and some cohesion from your adversary. Your adversary also gets to try to hit you back. If you score a hit, you also subtract some of your own cohesion. When you run out of cohesion, you retreat (as a element, not necessarily the whole stack). Once in a while the stack thinks about retreating and will try to do so if outnumbered, out of cohesion, or if lots of its elements are retreating (the chance of success is based on things like evasion). Whether you land a hit is based on whether a random number is greater than your score, where your score is calculated based on your firepower, assault, damage, and other statistics, those of your commander(s) (you have up to two commanders, one based on your brigade/division and the other based on the stack leader if the stack leader is different - I think the army commander affects the statistics of your stack leader, but not your chances directly).
Element firepower, assault, and damage values are given in pairs, I think the first is ranged the second is assault. A battle starts at long range (8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2) and goes to range 1 and range 0 (assault). If a more rounds occur (if neither army is destroyed or retreats), only range 1 and range 0 (assault) occur in subsequent rounds. There is also ranged and assault damage, ranged is given in pairs again. I'm not 100% sure how it all works, but basically at a range, sharpshooters are a bit lower than infantry thus, as you say, about half as robust as infantry. In assault, sharpshooters are much less than infantry, so robustness is much closer to a quarter (who knows how the numbers are aggregated, maybe it is worse than a quarter). Add in that sharpshooters have a longer range and a faster rate of fire, you are right, they are quite strong.
A counter point is that since they weren't often on the front line during the assault phase of real battles, we might guess that they killed a lot more soldiers than sharpshooters were killed in the real war. On the other hand, sharpshooters might have been used more often as skirmishers, and thus might have been captured at a fairly high rate, I'm not sure.
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Captain_Orso
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Gray Fox's description of how combat works fits pretty well into what I've read, except for one thing. Before a stack retreats from battle, units will retreat.
When it is decided which elements will be on the battle line, units are picked, starting with the unit with the highest cohesion and with the highest firepower, depending on whether they are attacking or defending.
Each time an element takes damage, it checks if its morale is broken. The more damage an element has taken, the more likely it is to break. I believe, but I don't remember exactly, the more elements of the same unit still fighting might bolster an element and lower the chances of it breaking. If it breaks, it will retreat from the battle line, but might still be chosen to fight in a subsequent round of battle. IIRC if an element breaks other elements of the same unit will also have to check if they too break and retreat from the battle line. Very early in the war the only units on the battlefield are brigades. Starting with October '61 the units can be divisions.
When an entire unit breaks, the stack can check for retreating, much like above, but on a larger scale. If enough units break, the entire stack will break and retreat from the battle.
When it is decided which elements will be on the battle line, units are picked, starting with the unit with the highest cohesion and with the highest firepower, depending on whether they are attacking or defending.
Each time an element takes damage, it checks if its morale is broken. The more damage an element has taken, the more likely it is to break. I believe, but I don't remember exactly, the more elements of the same unit still fighting might bolster an element and lower the chances of it breaking. If it breaks, it will retreat from the battle line, but might still be chosen to fight in a subsequent round of battle. IIRC if an element breaks other elements of the same unit will also have to check if they too break and retreat from the battle line. Very early in the war the only units on the battlefield are brigades. Starting with October '61 the units can be divisions.
When an entire unit breaks, the stack can check for retreating, much like above, but on a larger scale. If enough units break, the entire stack will break and retreat from the battle.
@Captain_Orso: That is how the manual describes retreat, what I wrote is based on looking at the battle log (especially the more expanded version from before the current patch). In the battle log it is hard to figure out exactly how retreats work, I'm not sure if/when a unit selected to be a target can retreat before the end of a round. In many cases they do not retreat an are targetted but do not get to fire back. I only discuss it because I wanted to be precise about what I think the difference in unit strength between sharpshooters and line infantry is.
@Gray Fox: Oops, I think we posted at about the same time and I didn't see your post until just now. You are right about everything you say, of course. I'm conservative when it comes to changing the strength of units in my mod (as in, I haven't ever done it), and was only trying to justify how strong they are. In spite of what I said, they probably are too strong.
On the other hand, I think a lot of generals didn't use sharpshooters the way that Rodes, Blackford, Berdan, and Birges intended. I've seen that General Bernard quote before, but I've never thought about whether or not he agreed with Rodes/Blackford about how sharpshooters should be used and what they are capable of.
@Gray Fox: Oops, I think we posted at about the same time and I didn't see your post until just now. You are right about everything you say, of course. I'm conservative when it comes to changing the strength of units in my mod (as in, I haven't ever done it), and was only trying to justify how strong they are. In spite of what I said, they probably are too strong.
On the other hand, I think a lot of generals didn't use sharpshooters the way that Rodes, Blackford, Berdan, and Birges intended. I've seen that General Bernard quote before, but I've never thought about whether or not he agreed with Rodes/Blackford about how sharpshooters should be used and what they are capable of.
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